Dear SOS: The best cookies I've ever had -- ever, anywhere -- are the ooey-gooey double-chocolate cookies at Milk. Can you persuade them to part with the recipe?

Meghan RoseLos Angeles

Dear Meghan: Have your napkins and a big glass of milk at the ready for this recipe. Three types of chocolate are folded into this rich cookie dough, which is baked just long enough for each cookie to set up on the outside while remaining oh so "ooey-gooey" inside. Messy? Yes, but perfectly so.

1. In a bowl set over a pot of simmering water, melt the unsweetened chocolate and butter. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.

2. In the bowl of a mixer with a paddle attachment, or in a large bowl using a fork, combine the eggs, vanilla and sugar. Mix just until incorporated and set aside.

3. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl. Set aside.

4. Add the melted chocolate to the egg mixture and mix just until combined. Stir in the sifted dry ingredients and mix just until combined, then stir in the bittersweet chocolate.

5. Cover the batter with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour to chill thoroughly. Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

6. Divide the dough into 18 portions. Grease your hands (to prevent the dough from sticking) and shape the portions into balls. Place the balls on a greased, parchment-lined sheet pan, leaving 2 to 3 inches between each.

7. Bake until the edges of the cookies are just set and the center is still soft, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. Place the cookies, still on the parchment, on a rack and cool completely before serving. They will be very soft.

WOW! Those cookies pack a punch. I had two this afternoon and felt a chocolate "rush" for hours. Reminded me of when I've ordered the most decadent chocolate desert in a restaurant and then felt "bombed" for the rest of the night. Powerful stuff.

I'll have to get my wife's recipe for a bomb/bombe? thing. I assume it's killer, but have no personal experience of it, as our dinner guests devoured it so ravenously and thoroughly that none was left for me (after I had stepped outside for just a few minutes to have a quick drink and toke with a friend), requests for the recipe, near legendary status amoung that party's guests, etc, etc.

However, one of my alltime favorite standbys is pretty simple. Take a good ball of white chocolate cookie dough (scratch is best, but those pre-made store-bought buckets or rolls work, too). Bake a nice small pancake sized cookie, soft, thickish. Put on some good dollops of good rich vanilla ice cream (again, scratch is better, but store bought works). Spoon on some really good preserves (I like raspberry or strawberry) that you've cooked with some Cointreau or VSOP (or regular brandy) or in keeping (a fruit based higher test distilled alcohol, of complimentary flavor) (kind of cool looking, too, as this stuff will flame briefly). Kind of a really satisfying, intoxicating, sensual down-home decadence, but anything that killer would pass muster on any table anywhere.

I just cooked myself dinner for the first time in about, oh eight or nine months. All I have right now is a borrowed sauté pan and some silverware, so tonight's fare was:

two green plantains, which were peeled and sliced into medallions ranging from one eighth to about three quarters inch thick. These go into a nearly smoking-hot pan of olive oil so that they're just bathing, not floating. Flip a couple of times 'till they're golden brown, put on a paper towel, generously apply Tony Chachere's, and, Ta daaa... instant bachelor food!

They get nice and sweet when they're ripe, but not super-sweet. It's terrific with picadillo and rice. I love the green fried plantain as well. You can't grow up in the Afro-Caribbean without liking that stuff in all its forms

And John, we have the same mashed plantain thing, which we call fufu de platano verde.

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